A Broken System

How broken is the justice system.

There is evidence that it is very broken.

The evidence is chronicled by certain stories which have caught the eye of the media and get followed from beginning to end; among them we have  O.J., Casey Anthony, Kelly Soo Park, George Zimmerman all of whom were acquitted of murder. Then, we have the not so publicized 142 individuals found guilty of murder and later exonerated inclusive of eighteen people proven innocent and exonerated as a result of DNA testing. These 18 served their sentences on death row in 11 different states in the United States. They served combined sentences of 229 years for crimes they did not commit.

 So again I ask how broken is the justice system.

Very broken.

 As a citizen of the United States you are entitled to being judged by a "jury of your peers". I ask however, how often does that actually occur. We have seen people of color have juries that are all white, women tried and the jury is all male, poor individuals with a 6th grade education judged by college educated professionals. And, while the jury is supposed to represent peers of the defendant and plaintiff how does a black 17year old and white 28 year old get represented by 6 middle aged women. What peer group is this. The jury selection process in itself is a joke - lawyers strike those that they feel will harm their chances of a win, not necessarily those that will weigh the facts and make sound decisions.

 So now that you have your jury let's look at their  process. We take these folks, some educated and some not; some biased and some not; some that are leaders and persuasive and intimidating and many more that are not and we throw them together. These folks are required to put in a full day's work; sometimes for days, weeks or months. They listen to voluminous amounts of information and view many exhibits. They listen to testimony after testimony. They listen to lawyers for hours on end. Sometimes the lawyers even slip in their own twists on events and situations that somehow go uncontested. And,somehow those slipped in statements become part of the story and are viewed as facts.

Lastly, consider that the average reading level for a United States citizen is grade 8 and then consider this group of lay people is given pages and pages - 18, 22 and more of "jury instructions". The "instructions" are written in legal language that the lawyers and judge cannot even break down into lay person's terms without feeling like they would be leading the jurors and then expose a guilty verdict to an appeal.  The jury is then sent into a room to determine the guilt or innocence of rapists, embezzlers, murderers, child molesters and more. And, at the end of the day regardless of the instructions and the testimonies and the exhibits it comes down to the personal biases and beliefs of those in the room. And in addition to that it comes down to the strongest personalities in the jury room and what they think and quite frankly the outcome they desire.

If you were falsely accused or, if you were seeking justice for yourself or a loved one, is this the process you want followed to determine who walks free or, who goes to jail or gets the death penalty. So I ask you to consider again, how broken is this justice system. When a juror after, finding a defendant not guilty of manslaughter describes in an interview her reasoning and quite frankly it fits like a hand in a glove for manslaughter definition.

 If we want justice, we have to fix the justice system. Because the system is broken, very very broken.